Followers

Thursday, June 20, 2019

BLACK, RED AND GREEN: The story behind the Kenyan flag

Fifty-six years
ago, on July 26, 1963, the national flag of the soon to be newly independent
state of Kenya was unveiled. The standard was typical of the country that had created
it – cobbled together by an elite but imbued with pretensions at unity and
forging common cause with common folk.

In those heady
days, as Kenya geared up to party, one could be forgiven for ignoring the
tensions bubbling underneath. The country was in transition and the previous
two years had been marked by political crisis, brinkmanship and even threats of
war and secession. As described in 1964 by Guardian
journalist Clyde Sanger and former official in the Kenyan colonial
administration, John Nottingham, “During this period Kenya first experienced six
weeks when neither [of the two major political parties, the Kenya African
National Union or the Kenya African Democratic Union] would form a government
and [Governor Patrick Renison] told visitors he was prepared to rule by decree;
10 months in which K.A.D.U., with backing from Michael Blundell's New Kenya
Party and Arvind Jamidar's Kenya Indian Congress, carried on a minority
government sustained by more than a dozen nominated members; and a year in
which K.A.N.U. and K.A.D.U. uneasily joined in a coalition which was as full of
frustrations as it was of intrigues. The politics of nation-building could not
even begin until K.A.N.U. had fought and won a straight democratic election”.

Today, the messy
story of Kenya’s struggle for independence has largely been swept under the symbolism
of the flag, yet the contradictions and disputes that gave rise to it continue
to haunt the nation as they were never fully resolved. The tale of the flag
itself is a manifestation of these issues.

Historically,
flags were linked to conflict. “The primordial rag dipped in the blood of a
conquered enemy and lifted high on a stick – that wordless shout of victory and
dominion – is a motif repeated millions of times in human existence,” wrote Whitney
Smith in his book Flags Through the Ages
and Across the World. Modern flags evolved out of the battle standards carried into war by
ancient armies and “were almost certainly the invention of the ancient peoples
of the Indian subcontinent or what is now China” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

In battle, flags
were both symbolic and practical. They provided mobile rallying points for
soldiers engaged in combat, could be used to signify victory or even, in plain
white form, a truce or surrender. In the days before radio communications, they
were also ways of communicating across vast distances, especially by sailors.
In the modern age, they are still carry powerful symbolic significance. “Show
me the race or the nation without a flag, and I will show you a race of people
without any pride,” Marcus Garvey was reported to have declared in 1921.

On the African
continent, almost all the current national flags were created in the years
following the Second World War and in the run-up to the demise of colonialism.
Many still bear hallmarks of that colonial past. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the ensigns of
countries that had a common colonial past “bear strong family resemblances to
one another”. It distinguishes two major categories: those former French
colonies which “tend to have vertical tricolours and are generally
green-yellow-red” and those of the Anglophone which “have horizontal tricolours
and often include green, blue, black, and white.”

Kenya’s standard
also carries this history. It can be traced directly to that of the Kenya
African Union, which was founded in 1942 under the name Kenya African Study
Union, with Harry Thuku as its president. The flag of the KAU (the word “Study”
was dropped in 1946) adopted the Pan-African colours pioneered by Garvey’s Universal
Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League 25 years before –
red, black and green, which respectively represented the blood that unites all
people of Black African ancestry and which was shed for liberation; the race of
black people as a nation; and the natural wealth of Africa. (It must be noted,
though, that some have suggested that when Garvey proposed the colours, he
meant the latter two to reflect sympathy for the “Reds of the world” as well as
the Irish struggle for freedom.)

However, when
originally introduced on September 3, 1951, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, KAU’s flag was
only black and red with a central shield and arrow. The following year, the
background was altered to three equal horizontal stripes of black, red and
green with a white central emblem consisting of a shield and crossed spear and
arrow, together with the initials “KAU”. At the time the black stood for the
indigenous population, red for the common blood of all humanity, green symbolised
the nation’s fertile land while the shield and weapons were a reminder that
organised struggle was the basis for future self-government.

Jomo Kenyatta took
over the presidency of KAU from James Gichuru in 1947. Five years later, as
reported by Karari wa Njama, a Mau Mau veteran and alumnus of Alliance High
School, in the book Mau Mau from Within,
Kenyatta’s
explanation of the significance of the KAU flag had changed. “What he said must
mean that our fertile lands (green) could only be regained by the blood (red)
of the African (black). That was it! The black was separated from the green by
the red: The African could only get to his land through blood.”

Kenyatta was speaking
in Nyeri as the Mau Mau uprising was gathering steam. Though billed as a KAU
meeting, Karari says that “"most of the organisers of the meeting were Mau
Mau leaders and most of the crowd Mau Mau members".

Yet Kenyatta himself
had little to do with the Mau Mau. On the contrary, he consistently denied any
involvement with them and is, in fact, reported – on the same day – as having distinguished the KAU from the uprising
and having disavowed the use of violence. “He who calls us the Mau Mau is not
truthful. We do not know this thing Mau Mau…K.A.U. is not a fighting union that
uses fists and weapons. If any of you here think that force is good, I do not
agree with you: remember the old saying that he who is hit with a rungu
returns, but he who is bit with justice never comes back. I do not want people
to accuse us falsely – that we steal and that we are Mau Mau.”

However, Karari’s recollection
is important given that the red in the Kenyan flag would later be claimed to reflect “the blood that was shed in the fight for independence”.

By 1956, the Mau
Mau revolt had been brutally quashed and gradually the restrictions on
political organisation were eased. In 1960, the eight-year State of Emergency
was lifted and the ban on colony-wide African political parties relaxed. KANU
was founded on May 14 of that year and, as Charles Hornsby writes in his book Kenya: A History Since
Independence,
“its name, black, red and green flag and symbols were chosen as a direct
successor to those of KAU”. At some point, the cockerel and battle axe were
introduced as symbols of the party. A month later, on June 25, KADU was formed.
John Kamau, an Associate Editor with the Daily
Nation has written that the “Kanu and Kadu flags were similar in design. Both had three
horizontal bands and two similar colours, black and green. The difference was
only in the third colour, red for Kanu and white for Kadu.”

KANU was dominated
by the large agricultural communities – the Kikuyu and Luo – while KADU represented
smaller, mostly pastoral ones, which feared domination. KANU won the 1961
election but refused to form a government before Kenyatta, who had been detained
in 1952, was released. KADU, after extracting some concessions from the
British, which included building Kenyatta a house in Gatundu and moving him
there, formed a minority government with its head, Ronald Ngala, as Leader of
Government Business and later as Chief Minister.

It was only in
September, after it had been in power for five months, that KADU begun to
foster an issue that would come to define the conflict between the two parties.
KADU espoused Majimbo, or regionalism, in opposition to KANU’s preference for a
highly centralised post-independence state. KADU was egged on by the white
colonial establishment to adopt this stand.

As explained by
Sanger and Nottingham:

“Majimbo's origins should be traced further
back, to Federal Independence Party formed in 1954 by white farmers, who saw
that political control would one day pass into African hands and wanted to seal
off the 'White Highlands' from an African central government and save the great
wealth of the Highlands for those considered had been solely responsible for developing
it.“Indeed,
regionalism really goes much further back than this. Elspeth
Huxleyrecalls that the F.I.P. was only proposing to 'develop
the "white island" idea … to carve out a small territory, about the
size of Wales, comprising present areas of the Highlands. In this area they
would exercise self-government; so would the Africans in other areas; and Kenya
would become a federation of three or four smallish states, in only one of which would the colonists have political
control. Here they would entrench themselves.'”

x

It is interesting
that devolution, which is rooted in the Majimbo debates, has become a pillar of
the 2010 constitution. Many Kenyans do not realise just how much current
political debates are a reflection of much older, and not always innocent,
proposals.

KANU, in
opposition, was vociferously opposed to Majimbo, which it saw as entrenching
tribalism. And by the second Lancaster House Constitutional Conference, which
lasted from February to April 1962, both sides seemed, at least rhetorically,
firmly entrenched in their positions.

But it was mostly
for show. As Prof. Robert Manners wrote at the time, “The contesting parties are less
divided by issues, programs, and even concepts of political structure than they
are by competing personal ambitions.” He added that he had spoken to several
within the KADU camp, including two front benchers, who told him that they were
not really afraid of KANU domination but rather, were cynically hyping up fears
for personal benefit. “In short, it is fairly certain that KADU's leadership
does not share the ‘tribal’ fears they have helped to arouse in their
followers. They have employed some ancient anxieties and provoked a number of
new ones with the apparently calculated intent of prolonging in some measure
and for some time the freakish position of power with which they were endowed
when KANU refused, in April 1961, to form a government.” Sound familiar?

Regardless, the
outcome of the conference was a coalition government led by both Ngala, the Minister
of State for Constitutional Affairs with special responsibility for
administration, and Kenyatta, who had since been released and was now the Minister
of State for Constitutional Affairs with special responsibility for economic
planning and development. Each declared victory.

This “nusu mkate” government
was a fractious affair from which Kenyatta’s Number Two in KANU had been
excluded at the insistence of the Colonial Office. In his book, Not Yet Uhuru, Oginga Odinga speculated that “Governor Renison
persuaded the Colonial office that my visits to Socialist countries made me
unfit to take Cabinet office”. He was also aware of “behind-the-scenes
discussions in London in which some Kanu men hinted that I would be
unacceptable not only to Kadu but even to some groups in Kanu”.

Still, the
coalition held till the elections in 1963, which KANU again won handily and
this time they got to form the government, with Kenyatta as Prime Minister. In
June, Kenya attained self-government and arrangements for independence began in
earnest. Among the issues that would need to be settled was the question of a
political union with neighbouring Uganda and Tanzania. As late as July, the
idea of an East African Federation was still being taken seriously.

A month before, on
July 5, Kenyatta and his Ugandan and Tanganyikan counterparts, Milton Obote and
Julius Nyerere, had issued the Declaration of Federation, in which they committed to establishing a
political federation by the end of the year. This was another idea with a long
history, pioneered by the white colonial settler establishment who, as far back
as the 1920s, were ready to establish a federal capital in Nairobi in order to
reduce the influence of London in the region.

The region was
already tied together by a network of more than 40 different East African
institutions covering areas such as research, social services,
education/training and defence. As Nyerere had observed in March, “A federation
of at least Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika should be comparatively easy to
achieve. We already have a common market, and run many services through the
Common Services Organisation…This is the nucleus from which a federation is the
natural growth.”

When the issue
came up for debate in the UK’s House of Lords on July 15, Francis Twining warned of the
difficulties of federation since it involved the loss of sovereignty which “these
new countries value … above all else. They jealously prize their status
symbols, such as national flags and national anthems”.

And, as Nyerere
himself would admit 34 years later, flags and other national symbols, rather than tools to
rally unity, had become tools of personal aggrandisement and actually stood in
the way of such unity. “Once you multiply national anthems, national flags and
national passports, seats at the United Nations, and individuals entitled to 21
guns salute, not to speak of a host of ministers, prime ministers, and envoys,
you have a whole army of powerful people with vested interests in keeping
Africa balkanised.” Across the continent, attempts at political federation met
quick deaths.

As Kenya moved
towards independence, some within Kenyatta’s circle wanted to use the KANU flag
as the national flag. This was not without precedent. As Tom Mboya, the
brilliant young Justice and Constitutional minister, noted, “It is not without significance that our neighbours, Tanganyika and
Uganda, both saw it fit to use the ruling party flag simply as a basis for the
national flag.”

However, Mboya
cautioned against simply adopting the KANU flag, warning that it would further
polarise the country. He managed to convince Kenyatta, who formed a small
committee chaired by Dawson Mwanyumba, the Minister for Works, Communication
and Power, to come up with the national colours. Doing so was not difficult
because he was not really looking for national colours but rather a political
compromise everyone could live with. So he did the obvious thing and combined
the colours of the KANU and KADU flag by introducing the white fimbriation. The
flag retained and updated the elements of the KAU flag, such as the shield and
spears. The KANU cockerel and axe were omitted from the flag but made it onto
the coat of arms.

When the flag was
shown to the cabinet, the meaning of the red colour matched what Karari had understood
Kenyatta to say over a decade before. Rather than simply including KADU, the
white fimbriation was said to symbolise a multiracial society but the cabinet
changed it to “peace”, perhaps a sign that while racial minorities would be
tolerated in the new Kenya, their integration was not necessarily on the agenda.

But there were
other issues related to minorities to be settled. In the northeast, the Somali
population was in open revolt.A 1962
survey had found that 85 percent of Somalis preferred to join Somalia. However,
in March 1963, Duncan Sandys, the Colonial Secretary, under pressure from
Kenyan ministers, supported a Kenyan future for them. This sparked mass protests,
an election boycott, calls for armed secession and attacks on government facilities.
By November, the so-called Shifta war was raging, with audacious attacks by
rebels armed and trained by Somalia.

In Nairobi, Mboya pushed
an amendment to the National Flag, Emblems and Names Act to outlaw the display
of flags purporting to represent Kenya or a part thereof. This was meant to
stop the Somalis flying the Somalia flag in the Northern Frontier District. But
it also had other targets.

At the third and
final Lancaster House Constitutional Conference, held between late September
and mid-October 1963, tensions were so high that KADU leaders Ngala and Daniel
arap Moi, who had been elected President of the Rift Valley Region, threatened to
secede from Kenya, with Moi releasing a partition map and threatening a
unilateral declaration of independence. (Again, sound familiar?) There were
even suspicions of an alliance with the Somalis in the NFD, which were fueled
by a cable from Jean Seroney, at the London talks, to Moi: “Dishonourable
betrayal of majimbo agreement by Britishers. Alert Kalenjin and region and Kadu
to expect and prepare for worst. Partition and operation Somalia only hope.”

Mboya’s motion was
thus not just aimed at the Somalis; the threats of secession by KADU regions
had to be put down and one way was to deny them the right to fly flags
purporting to represent an autonomous, or even independent, part of Kenya. Local
councils, though, like the Nairobi City Council, were allowed to have their own
flags.

There would be
more drama surrounding the flag on independence day. The symbolism of lowering
the Union Jack at midnight right before the Kenyan flag went up was profoundly
discomfitting to the British. They determined that their flag would not be
raised for the event after it had been lowered, as was customary, at 6pm.
Kenyatta, who by now was their reliable lackey, was happy to go with it but
when he presented the plan to the Cabinet, it was shot down, largely thanks to
Mboya. So another plan was hatched with Arthur Horner, the former Permanent
Secretary in the Ministry of Works and then the head of the Independence
Celebrations Directorate (the body charged with organising the event), who secretly
ordered to put out the lights as the British standard came down and switch them
back on as the Kenyan flag was raised. It was a ploy the Brits had pulled
before, in both Uganda and Tanganyika.

On 30th
July, just a few days after the national flag had been introduced, Kenyatta had
given a ministerial statement on the independence day celebrations in which he bemoaned
the people’s penchant to fly party flags wherever and whenever they desired,
declaring it illegal. The national flag, he declared, would only be flown by
“Cabinet Ministers and other authorised persons” and its reproduction, along
with that of Kenyatta’s own portrait, would be strictly controlled. In this
way, under the guise of honouring it, the flag was shielded from the masses and
reserved for the glorification of the ruling elite. The flag, and the state it
stood for, became the property of a few, not of all Kenyans.

After
independence, this “protection” of the flag from the people, who were deemed too
unclean to handle it, continued with frequent debates in Parliament about who
could and who couldn’t fly it. Under Jomo Kenyatta’s successors, the law and
the policy has remained largely unchallenged.

But the last two
decades have seen the beginnings of a popular movement to claim the Kenyan flag.
It has become ever more present in Kenyans’ lives – from activists like Njonjo
Mue, who in 2004 scaled the walls of Parliament and ripped the flag off a cabinet minister’s car as a way of demonstrating the government’s loss
of moral authority to govern, and who more recently has been charged with flying
the flag on his own car, to the many Kenyans brandishing it during public
rallies and sporting events (it even famously made an appearance at the World
Cup) it seems that, as Kenyatta feared 55 years ago, “every Tom, Dick and
Harry” is flying it. He must be turning in his mausoleum. Good.

However, besides
reclaiming the use of the flag, Kenyans need to also consider what it means
today. If it is not to be a tool of personal aggrandisement or unthinking and
enforced veneration of the state, then what should it be used for? Who or what
does it represent?

In the years since
independence, it has been a symbol, not of Kenyans and their struggles against
oppression, but of Kenya and the power the continues to be wielded against them.
The rituals associated with the flag and other symbols such as the national
anthem, both reinforce and, paradoxically, disguise this. It is clear in the
common statement that “Kenya is greater than any one of us” which at once distinguishes
Kenya from Kenyans while also proclaiming the myth that the state is something
more than a largely self-serving political arrangement between elites competing
for power and prestige. Kenya, we are rather told, is a divinely-ordained an
eternally established ordering of Kenyans to which we all owe allegiance and
subservience. It recalls a time in my childhood when I was informed that
suicide was illegal because it deprived the state of taxes, as if Kenyans were made
for Kenya and not the other way around.

In the week where
we mark the anniversary of Kenyatta’s “Tom, Dick and Harry” statement to the
House of Representatives, perhaps we could all take some time to remember all
the history – good and bad – that the flag represents, as well as reflect on
what else it could stand for.

We can choose, and
many are choosing, to reinterpret its design and colours to suit, not the
ambitions and egos of politicians, but the realities and aspirations of
ordinary Kenyans. As it did for Karari wa Njama all those years ago, it should
today serve as a reminder of the need to continue the struggle to free ourselves
from the existing colonially-inspired order – that despite 55 years of
independence, the black is still separated from the green.